The bugle-call to arms again sounded in my war-trained ear, the bayonets gleamed, the sabres clashed, and the Prussian helmets and... the eagles of France stood face to face on the borders of the Rhine.... I remembered our own armies, my own war-stricken country and its dead, its widows and orphans, and it nerved me to action for which the physical strength had long ceased to exist, and on the borrowed force of love and memory, I strove with might and main.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

My Christian friends, in bonds of love, whose hearts in sweetest union join,Your friendship's like a drawing band, yet we mu...st take the parting hand.Your company's sweet, your union dear; Your words delightful to my ear,Yet when I see that we must part, You draw like cords around my heart.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

The dead have been awakened--shall I sleep?The world's at war with tyrants--shall I crouch?...The harvest's ripe--and shall I pause to reap?I slumber not; the thorn is in my couch;Each day a trumpet soundeth in mine ear,Its echo in my heart.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

That air would disappear from the whole earth in time, perhaps; but long after his day. He did not know just when it had become so... necessary to him, but he had come back to die in exile for the sake of it. Something soft and wild and free, something that whispered to the ear on the pillow, lightened the heart, softly, softly picked the lock, slid the bolts, and released the prisoned spirit of man into the wind, into the blue and gold, into the morning, into the morning!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

Then Pope, as harmony itself exact,In verse well disciplined, complete, compact,...Gave virtue and morality a grace,That, quite eclipsing pleasure's painted face,Levied a tax of wonder and applause,Even on the fools that trampled on their laws.But he (his musical finesse was such,So nice his ear, so delicate his touch)Made poetry a mere mechanic art;And every warbler has his tune by heart.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »

It has always been my practice to cast a long paragraph in a single mould, to try it by my ear, to deposit it in my memory, but to... suspend the action of the pen till I had given the last polish to my work.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »